eBooks Base 2000

The sun had
painted their half-embraced silhouettes against the slanting
tree-trunk, and began to decline unnoticed; the ripple of the water
mingling with their whispers came as one sound to the listening ear;
even their eloquent silences were as deep, and, I wot, perhaps as
dangerous, as the darkened pool that filled so noiselessly a dozen
yards away. So quiet were they that the tremor of invading wings once
or twice shook the silence, or the quick scamper of frightened feet
rustled the dead grass. But in the midst of a prolonged stillness the
young man sprang up so suddenly that Nellie was still half clinging to
his neck as he stood erect. "Hush!" he whispered; "some one is near!"
He disengaged her anxious hands gently, leaped upon the slanting
tree-trunk, and running half-way up its incline with the agility of a
squirrel, stretched himself at full length upon it and listened.
To the impatient, inexplicably startled girl, it seemed an age before
he rejoined her.
"You are safe," he said; "he's going by the western trail toward Indian
Spring.


Pages:
193 194 195 196 197 198 199 200 201 202 203 204 205 206 207 208 209 210 211 212 213 214 215 216 217